The SEO industry is one that is constantly evolving – thanks, mostly, to Google’s sporadic algorithm updates – but despite its changes, in both practice and reputation, it’s still an essential part of any digital strategy. Research shows that the first result in Google will receive 36.4% of all the clicks, so if you reach the number one spot, you will capture over a third of the potential audience automatically.

However, reaching that coveted position is not always an easy task. The days of excessive backlinks and keyword stuffing are long gone, and have been replaced by a requirement for genuinely helpful, high quality content. Most companies are already using blogging, email marketing, social media, and many other text and image based mediums to provide this – but what many do not realise is that video can help with SEO too.

YouTube is now the second biggest search engine in the world; it has more than 1 billion unique users each month and in 2011, had around 140 views for every person on earth. Google has even started including ‘rich snippets’ – information about videos that are available on particular pages – in their organic search results – and embedding video into your company homepage is therefore, unsurprisingly, a great idea for SEO. In fact, used properly, video can increase your chances of achieving a front-page Google result by a staggering 53x.

If your business is looking for SEO assistance and hasn’t yet considered video, now is a very good time to start!

Google’s attempts at breaking into social media have not always been successful – does anyone remember Buzz or Wave? – but its Google+ platform at last seems to be gaining some traction. It now has a base of loyal users (190 million, in case you were wondering) and has just updated the mobile interface to make it more user-friendly.

Posts now appear as ‘cards’ in the stream, making it easier than ever for users to read, +1, and share content. Profiles and pages now have cover photos and larger ‘tap targets’ for people using touchscreen devices. The overall experience is now much more streamlined and visually stimulating across all screen sizes.

There are two lessons to be learned from Google+ makeover. The first is that Google is doing everything it can to make the site a success, so you should certainly sign your business up and take advantage of its features if you haven’t already.

The second is the importance of optimisation for mobile devices. We all know that the mobile web is becoming increasingly important, thanks to the ever increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets, and as we’ve said before, your business website must be optimised for mobile if you want to reach the widest possible range of customers.

SEO link building is becoming more and more controversial, as Google continually updates its algorithm to weed out anybody that’s not playing the rules. Nowadays, stuffing random links in to websites and articles could get you into a lot of trouble – instead, you have to make the effort to build links in a genuine way that will add value for your users. If you need to boost your site ranking, but want to stay in Google’s good books, here are useful three ways to build your link profile without veering into black hat SEO territory.

Write a guest blog

Inbound links are a great source of SEO assistance, but they have to be created carefully in order to avoid any implications of spam. Writing guest blogs is a legitimate, helpful way of providing useful information for external readers and giving your own site a little boost – plus, it allows you to show off your expertise to a whole new audience and be seen as a thought leader in your industry.

Share on social media

If you write a blog, an article or other piece of genuinely useful content, try sharing a link to it on your social media sites. ‘Social signals’, as Google calls them, are becoming increasingly important for any business that wants to rank well, so sharing your work keeps your profile active and adds a helpful link to your portfolio at the same time.

Create an infographic

Infographics are all the rage nowadays – they’re a great way of imparting a lot of key stats in a fun, engaging way. You can use your own research or culminate interesting stats from other sources (giving full credit to the original creator, of course). Not only are infographics a useful point of contact for your user, they also tend to get pretty good press – and if another company covers your work, you’ll gain links (and hopefully new fans and followers too!)

If you’re plugged into social networking, you’re going to start noticing a number of changes to your Facebook and Google+ pages over the next few weeks. Facebook users will discover an entirely overhauled newsfeed, whilst Google+ aficionados will be treated to larger cover photos, an easy to use ‘About’ tab and a new user reviews section.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, described the redesign as a “personalised newspaper” that offered “a richer, simpler, more beautiful news feed … that is focused on the things that [users] care about.” The re-launched news feed will be divided into a range of new sections: All Friends, Most Recent, Close Friends, Music, Photos, Following and Games.

The ‘Following’ section is the most relevant for your business because it’s designed specifically for users who follow Facebook ‘Pages’. The new design encourages users to interact with the content posted on business pages (see these images from Search Engine Journal.) For example, if you post a link to your blog on your Facebook page, the thumbnail image will be larger than it is now, and the title will be presented in a more engaging magazine style. As a nice final touch, your logo will appear at the bottom right hand corner of the summary! All of this points to a likely increase in the number of click-throughs to your website from the content you post on your business’s Facebook page.

For Google+, the most beneficial aspect for businesses is the reviews tab, which makes it easier for users to create (hopefully) positive reviews that recommend your company to other users. Google+ may not enjoy Facebook’s level of popularity just yet (Google+ has 400 million registered users, while Facebook has more than 1 billion), but the new features are designed to attract a new batch of more engaged, interactive users.

As a familiar household name and a company that’s been trading for more than 90 years, Interflora is probably one of the last companies you’d expect to be breaching Google’s rules in the hopes of improving their SEO. However, news broke last week that Interflora has been using links from a significant number of ‘advertorials’ to boost their standing in the SERPS, without using a ‘no follow’ tag – which is a strict no-no in the SEO world.

“In January, Interflora, in order to get ready for Valentine’s Day, paid newspapers to run stories which were only there to get links to improve their Google ranking,” David Naylor, head of SEO at Bronco, explained in an interview with Computer Weekly. “In SEO terms, advertorials are like gold dust, but have to be taken with care. Interflora went and did as many as humanly possible, and they really went too far.”

Although the punishment of Interflora is likely to be temporary, it still teaches other businesses an important lesson about the importance of conducting their SEO campaigns in a responsible manner. To keep your SEO campaign in Google’s good books, make sure that you:

• Approach advertorials with caution
  Google is bound to be keeping an eye on them, so keep advertorials to a minimum and don’t be tempted to pay for the removal of the ‘no follow’ on your back-link. 
• Keep link building above board
• Focus on building links from genuine, credible sources – for instance, by writing a guest blog for a site in your industry. 
• Prioritise quality content 
• As the saying goes, ‘content is king’ when it comes to the Google search results, so creating high quality, user friendly content that people naturally want to link to, is the key to SEO success. 

In the end, Google ended up not only penalising Interflora, but also the newspaper that ran the advertorials, demonstrating just how seriously they take such breaches of SEO best practice.

To most people, Google is the definitive search engine. It’s even become ingrained in our day to day vocabulary – most of us barely go a day without using it as a verb (“I’ll just google it!”) and it’s even listed as such in the Oxford English Dictionary.

However, new figures from Experian Hitwise indicate that Google could be losing its iron clad grip on the search engine market, as its market share dropped below 90% for the second month in a row. Google’s share of the search market is now 88%, and whilst this means that it is still dominating a significant percentage of searches, this is its lowest point for five years.

The news comes just days after social media platform Facebook announced the launch of its very own search engine, a “graph” system based on natural searches of information shared between users. Although Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was quick to explain that their new offering isn’t intended to challenge Google – “We’re not indexing the web…We’re indexing our map of the graph” – it will almost certainly make a difference to the way consumers search for information.

It seems that the shape of search is changing; whilst Google is still top dog at the moment, Experian Hitwise’s statistics suggest other sites like Microsoft and Yahoo! are beginning to claw their way back. It will be interesting to see what impact this has on SEO – particularly if social sites continue to enter the search market too.

Rumours have been flying around for quite some time, but yesterday Mark Zuckerberg and his team made it official: social media behemoth Facebook has created its own search engine, a feature known as “graph search”. The development will allow users to make “natural” searches of information shared by their friends, such as photos, status updates, location data and likes.

The search function is primarily intended for users to find information about their friends and fan pages, but Facebook is integrating Microsoft’s Bing search engine to their site, in case users require further detail. Contrary to popular opinion, Zuckerberg stated that the search engine was not created to rival Google, saying he “does not expect” people to start using the site for all of their web search needs.

“That isn’t the intent,” he explained during the unveiling at Facebook’s headquarters in California. “But in the event you can’t find what you’re looking for, it’s really nice to have this. We’re not indexing the web…We’re indexing our map of the graph. The graph is really big and constantly changing.”

Some users have expressed concerns about privacy, but Facebook developer Lars Rasmussen was quick to stress that “on graph search, you can only see content that people have shared with you.”

Mark Little, principal analyst at research firm Ovum, said that he was initially underwhelmed by the announcement, but concluded that the development could prove useful on both a personal and corporate basis.

“I think probably people were looking for something a little more strategic,” he explained. “On the plus side I think it’s going to help drive connection within the network between individuals and between companies and pages. If you are increasing connections between friends and pages you are effectively increasing the reach of advertisers.”

By now, you should know that SEO is a crucial part of any digital marketing campaign – but it’s not easy to implement, and many companies often find their enthusiasm waning from time to time. If you’re in need of some SEO inspiration, look no further than these staggering stats – you’ll want to get back to work straight away!

1. 70-80% of users ignore paid ads and focus on organic results
This figure, which comes from an eye tracking survey conducted by UserCentric, shows paid ads and SEO need to work in unison to attract the widest possible range of users. During the 2011 study, Usercentric allowed experienced Internet users access to both Bing and Google, and found that they spent longer looking at organic search results than paid alternatives. This shows that your business should be focusing on organic SEO as well, even if you have paid ads in the pipeline.

2. 42% of seach users click the top ranking link
This article from Instrapin shows highlights the importance of aiming for the top spot when it comes to SEO. Almost half of users will click the top link of a page of search results – the more effective your SEO campaign, the more likely you are to make it to the top.

3. SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads have just 1.7%
It’s all well and good focusing on web rankings and increases in traffic, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, businesses want sales. This stat, from Search Engine Journal, shows that 14.6% of SEO leads convert to a deal, compared with just 1.7% of outbound leads (e.g. those gained from ‘outbound’ marketing such as cold calling). Suddenly, working on your SEO efforts doesn’t seem like such a chore, does it?

If you’re one of the many companies trying to climb the SERPs ladder, you may have wondered why Google doesn’t provide a tool which allows you to calculate whether you’re going in the right direction. Whilst Google Analytics is a useful program, many people question why there isn’t a straightforward tool that will enable you to measure the success of your SEO campaign.

In fact, so many people have pondered this point that everybody’s favourite SEO expert, Matt Cutts, has addressed the issue in a recent online video post. He highlights the functions that Google already offers, such as their Webmaster tools and notifications, and then addresses the issue with a cautionary tale:

“Back in the early days, InfoSeek would actually let you submit a page, see immediately where it was ranking, and let you submit another page, and there are stories that have lasted since then about how people would just spend their entire day spamming InfoSeek, tweaking every single little thing until they got exactly the right template that would work to rank number one. So we don’t want to encourage that kind of experimentation.”

He then goes on to explain the balance that the search engine is trying to hit: “What we do want to provide is a lot of useful tools for people that are doing it themselves … we don’t want to make it easy for the spammers, but we do want to make it as easy as possible for everyone else,” Cutts explained. “There’s inherently a tension there, and we’re always trying to find the features that will help regular people while not just making it easy to spam Google.”

What features would you like to see Google produce to help with SEO?

Proper social media planning can take a long time, and it’s important to understand the pros and cons of each platform, as well as how to use it effectively. However, if you’re simply feeling a bit stuck in a rut with your social media, or don’t really know where to start, these three tips will help – and you can start using them straightaway!

1. Make some friends
Search one of your keywords on Facebook, Twitter or Google, and look at the people or companies that pop up. Start to follow them, like their pages, and respond to their posts. You won’t get a 100% response rate, but some of them will probably reciprocate, giving you a bigger captive audience. It doesn’t take much to build a rapport online, so there’s no excuse for not interacting with people in the know – you never know what it could lead to!

2. Customise your page
If your Facebook doesn’t have a cover photo, choose one. If your Twitter has a standard background, update it. If you don’t have a profile picture, add one. It is important to make your social media graphics consistent with your branding, but you don’t use the same boring template as everyone else. Customising your page helps you to stand out from the crowd, and your visitors will appreciate your creativity.

3. Post something (anything!)
The best advice for any company with a tentative social media strategy is to stop talking about it and just get on with it. Post something – a poll, a question, an interesting news story, or even a simple good morning. It’s time to start making your presence known, and the only way you can do that is by being active.